


Old Man Arc

by JackTheBard



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6557209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackTheBard/pseuds/JackTheBard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old man wanders the wastes, trying to consolidate power in the right hands. The hands that hold that power, however, do not want to yield it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Wind cascaded across rolling hills, through a cavernous valley to scour another thin layer of sand from stone, and rustled the cloak of a stoop-backed wanderer, jostling the cloth just enough to reveal a scabbard white as snow, gold inlay shining despite the dreary hellscape. It was not the wind, but it was a wind. A wind of change, and a wind of foreboding. Another gust came, starting up in the mountains far off in the distance, and the old man’s ears pricked up as he listened to it. The first gust had howled through the canyon, but this one screamed. It screamed high and unholy, a cry that tore through the old man and left him unfazed.

He had about two minutes.

The old man straightened up, towering higher than most now that his back was not bent with the weight of the world. He removed his pack and hid it behind a few stones, knowing full well that the harpy could just as easily steal his pack and run off with it to leave him for dead in the middle of the desert. Better to have it out of sight. He removed a pair of sand goggles, a long piece of cloth, and a photograph from his sack before he fully hid it out of sight. He buttoned up his jacket, pulled the goggles over his eyes, and wrapped his head as tightly as he could in the cloth, obscuring any definition of his face. Another gust of wind came along, carrying down from those mountains and across the hills through the canyon faster than it should have, and the shrieking was much louder this time.

“Time to go to work,” the old man said as he removed the sword and scabbard from under his jacket and held them in his left hand. His company arrived soon afterwards, accompanied by the heartless chill of an evil winter in… what damn season was it anyway? Hard to keep track with the weather as haywire as hit has been.

Her hair was black as deepest night, and her pale face, barely visible behind the high collar of her baggy coat and cowl, was contorted in rage. The tiniest flecks of snow swirled around her, icicles extending from her fingertips only to sharpen and fade back into her skin. “You!” she screamed at the man in front of her, floating slightly up in the air with the power she now possessed.

“Me,” he responded nonchalantly, though his grip on the scabbard tightened slightly. Years in this world, doing what he had been doing, made him an expert at weighing his opponent in a matter of seconds. She was related to the last one. Sister, probably, if he had to venture a guess. Too old to be a daughter. She was angry, and that means she would make mistakes. But, if the previous fight gave him any indication, he would face ice at unintentional openings, unless he was faster than her abilities. Which would be really fast. 

“You killed her!” the girl said, and the wind whipping around her tore her collar down a little bit to reveal more of her face. Heavens above, she couldn’t be more than sixteen.

“She wouldn’t help us, and I couldn’t afford to let her fall in the wrong hands. Just like I can’t afford to let you,” the old man explained. This is what his world had come to, he guessed. Fighting girls that were a third of his age. Probably less. “I wish I didn’t have to kill your sister,” he said. That much was true, “And I don’t want to kill you. But if you won’t help us, I will have to.”

“My sister gave me this power for a reason,” the girl said, shards of ice extending from her body in various places as the wind kicked up in anticipation once again, “And that reason is to avenge her!”

And there it was. No turning back, now. Blood of another innocent girl, corrupted by hate, on his hands. “If that is what you wish, then give me your best.” If he was lucky (unlucky?) she would kill him, and this futile quest would be at an end.

She rushed forward, and the old man noted that she was faster than her sister… or he was getting slow. Either was equally likely. It wasn’t until a moment later that he felt the cold seeping into his joints, which was bad. She was trying to slow him up intentionally.

Fortunately for the old man, the last one had tried the same trick. He whipped his sword out of the scabbard and used both the blade and its holder to block her hands, which now sported six-inch long ice talons. Funny that the same bloodline would use the same tricks. His knee creaked as he brought his leg up, cocked it, and drove his shin into her side with a massive roundhouse.

The girl tumbled away, and he felt the hoary frost clinging to his pant leg. He hadn’t beaten her defenses, so she was probably unharmed.

Damn.

The girl rebounded off the wall of the canyon, then launched right back at the old man with one leg thrust out, completely encased in ice to form a massive spike. The old man tossed his scabbard up and slipped his arm through the strap on the back, causing it to sprout into a decent sized kite shield. The tip of the icicle connected, and shattered into a thousand pieces. More than the crunch of ice, however, there was the crunch of bone.

Dumb girl had made the mistake of locking her knee before she threw her kick at him. He clucked his tongue and pushed her back, moving while she reeled from the pain. To his surprise, however, she spun about and delivered a roundhouse kick similar to the one that he had, save for the fact that her leg was now encased in a blade of clear ice.

The old man ducked under this strike, though he was pretty sure the wind from the attack jostled the cloth that wrapped up the top of his head. It provided a little protection from the cold air that permeated the canyon, now, and would save his nose and ears from frostbite. The goggles were to prevent her from blinding him by blasting him right in the face with a frozen wind. He learned that second one the hard way.

He spun in the duck and brought his sword across the back of her knee, hoping to hamstring her, and the girl shrieked at the impact. A little blood came out, but not enough to signify the deep cut he was hoping for. Her aerial acrobatics continued, with her even continuing to use the dislocated lower leg as a pseudo-flail, not really caring about the medical implications that it carried.

It was almost a lucky break for the old man that she was mainly using her powers with regards to creation of ice on her form rather than elsewhere in the canyon. She could have created a layer under his feet to destabilize his footing, or even encase his feet entirely so he could move. She could have dulled his blade by wrapping it up in the stuff, or made his sword and shield brittle by dropping their temperatures far below freezing.

She wasn’t very smart. But she was very angry, and those powers she carried fed off emotion. She was dangerous, intelligence notwithstanding. The old man needed to finish this quickly.

She brought her hands down like axes, then switched them to hooks at the last minute, hoping to trap his shield and pull it wide. He grunted as he felt them lock down, instead pulling her close and sliding his sword up in a thrust up under her ribs. He channeled his own power into the thrust, making a spear on the tip of the sword that would hopefully slice through her armor and pierce her belly. He also brought a hammer of force on his own elbow, adding an extra punch to the strike.

He felt the lance of power at the tip of his sword pierce the armor, shedding off layers to become a finer and finer point as the armor thickened around it, allowing the sword to slip through relatively easily, and she pulled on his shield, knowing her life was in danger. The old man resisted, pulling it closer to him even as she brought her legs about in the form of morning stars. He managed to block the good leg, but the injured limb wrapped around his side (which could have taken the brunt of the blow), and struck across his back, driving a few spikes in between his ribs. Lucky for him, they were short and didn’t puncture anything more than skin and muscle. Furthermore, the strike drove his body closer to hers, causing his sword to fully puncture her belly.

The blade sank in about two inches before she realized what was happening and her eyes went wide. She roared in pain and surprise and struck at his neck, only to have his shield snap up and barely block it. He pushed the blade in deeper, up and in, puncturing a lung. She coughed, and blood spattered across the wraps around the old man’s head. He would have to wash those later.

As quickly as he could, he moved his shield arm down to remove the photograph from his pocket. He held it up to the girl’s eyes and said, “Look at her! Look her in the eye!” This was the only chance they had to put this girl’s power in the right hands. At least until they found the next opportunity.

The girl spat blood at him, a final act of defiance. She refused to look at the picture. The old man twisted the blade, causing her to cry out in pain, but she still did not take her gaze away from the goggles that covered his eyes. “Go to hell,” she said, the fire in her eyes dying rapidly.

“No… no!” The old man said as she pushed herself onto his sword further, driving it up through her lung and severing a major artery. She would bleed out in a matter of moments. “No! Look at her! Just look her in the eye! Make sure that it doesn’t go to waste!” The old man was practically begging with her at this point, and released his grip on the sword to cradle her as she floated back down to the ground, blood already beginning to pool underneath her.

She died with a smile. Not the smile of contentment from someone who lived and died well, but the smile of vengeance, knowing that she didn’t give the man that killed her what she wanted in her final moments. The light left her eyes, and the old man knew she was gone.

Silence in the canyon, no sound save for the slight breeze whistling across the stones for a moment, then the thud as the old man dropped her unceremoniously and went to retrieve his pack. He sheathed his sword, buckled it to his belt once again, and picked apart the stones that were barely jostled by their fight. He added what few supplies the girl had brought with her –a canteen of water, some iron rations- to his own. He made a point to leave the picture of her with the older girl that the old man had killed not two weeks earlier with her corpse. He stood, removed the head wrap and goggles, and put them away in his pack.

He wished he could stop doing this job, and live the life that his best friend had chosen. But everyone else considered their hands too clean for the task, and weren’t afraid to get them filthy with blood, sweat, and tears.

After all, killing Maidens was a dirty business.

The old man stood up, shouldered his pack, and headed to the East. He needed to pick up leads, and home was the closest place he could go.


	2. Chapter 2

An old man returns home a week after his most recent encounter with the Winter Maiden. Granted, it’s not the home that he left in the first place, all those years ago. He can’t really return to that home, especially since it’s been overrun, burned to the ground in the most metaphorical sense. The physical destruction of the place is evident, but it’s not something he cares to rebuild. Mother, Father, seven sisters. All are either dead or scattered. He has no desire to find them again.

All that exists now is his desire to put the power in the right hands. He sees the town off in the distance, palisade wall built of steel and stone, reinforced with girders taken from toppled buildings. Inside are good people. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, all of them have found home in New Vale Village. It’s where one of his few friends lives.

He doffs his hat to the guards as he approaches, and they recognize him instantly. The cry goes up around the palisade wall. “Open the gates! Open the gates!” the cry resounds, and Jaune almost feels welcome. The people of the village know what he does, that he tries to put the power of the maidens in the hands of those few people that still resist the Grimm and Salem. They don’t know what he has to do in order to try and ensure that.

He had one success a long time ago, and people still laud him for it.

The truth is, it wasn’t his success, but another’s.

The heavy metal gates swing open to admit the old man, and he walks through. The people all don’t rush to greet him, but instead continue about their business. They recognize him in passing, but his intent step and their own work keeps them set on their path save for a greeting or “welcome back” spared in his direction. He seeks the blacksmith.

It’s not hard to find her shop. The smokestack from the forge forms a bigger, darker plume than any other chimney in town, and he knows these streets by heart by this point. He approaches the open storefront and hears the clanging of metal.

The blacksmith is old, almost as old as he, though he wears the years much worse than she. While she had been slim and lithe in their youth, she’s now wiry and grizzled. Death itself could take a bite of her and wind up spitting her back out because she was too tough to chew. Where there had once been slender limbs, there was now tough, corded muscle built up over years of combat and swinging a hammer onto anvil. Hair that was once a dark shade of crimson has faded into slight streaks of white. She’s almost seventy, but her hair retains color, and her eyes retain fire. She hears him coming long before she acknowledges him, and only pauses in her hammering of metal for a moment.

“Been a long time, Jaune,” she says before she continues hammering out what looked like a spade’s blade.

That heart that lived in the old man’s heart had long since turned to stone, but whenever she spoke to him, it seemed to soften a bit. “It has, Ruby.”

He took his pack off his shoulders and tucked it into a corner of the shop where it wouldn’t be touched by the sparks or flames or heat, and watched her as she worked, even as he hung up his coat and started to unlace his boots. Even in her age, it was hard to not love her. Such passion and spirit rolled into a petite form, barely five feet. She hammered away at the spade tip and quenched it in a barrel of oil that already had scum on the top of it from projects presumably completed earlier in the day. She finally set the hammer down on the anvil and faced him, fists clenched on her hips. Her arms were bare and slicked with a sheen of sweat, her apron tied tight across the hips. Both of these served the purpose of preventing embers from burning skin, but she needed fear no embers. There was fire in those silver eyes of hers that threatened to light Jaune ablaze.

Ruby let out a sigh and grabbed a bandanna from a workbench and tied it about her head, putting up her apron and gesturing for him to follow. “Come on, then. You look like you haven’t eaten well in a month. Least I can do is offer you hospitality.”

Jaune followed without further word. Once they left her storefront and stepped into her house proper, she turned to face him, reaching up and beckoning for him to bow down. “Let me feel your face, you crotchety old bastard…” she murmured as he obliged her and ran her fingers across his face.

His months abroad brought a thick, heavy beard to his face, silver as the light of a full moon, much like his hair. His face was creased and weather-worn, but those ocean-blue eyes still shone with that dull passion of a man that needed only to finish the job he started.

“Heavens above,” Ruby murmured, her hands coming away from his face as she shook her head. She went over to the pantry and retrieved a loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, and some blackberry jam. “You’ve been following your method again, haven’t you?”

Ruby took out a knife and started cutting slices from the bread and the cheese as Jaune responded. “There isn’t really another way, Ruby.”

Without pausing, she responded, “Bullshit. Tara is proof of that.”

“We got lucky with her,” Jaune muttered bitterly, “there isn’t another way aside from that luck, Ruby.”

Ruby stopped dead and put the knife flat on the cutting board, trying to stop her hand from clutching around it and pointing it at Jaune in the same way she would have pointed her scythe at Roman or Neo or Cinder all those years ago. “Bullshit, Jaune. And you know it.”

“I have no choice.”

“What? Because they won’t listen to your idea of reason?” Her fingers curled on the cutting board and she forcibly had to pull her hand away from the countertop, lest they curl around the kitchen knife with intent other than providing hospitality.

“No. They won’t. I doubt they’d listen to yours either. Natural leader though you may be, you’re not as sweet and bubbly as you used to be, Ruby,” Jaune responded, “My way is the most efficient.”

She moved back to the cutting board, clutched the kitchen knife and drove it into the wheel of cheese with a grunt, turning to Jaune and pointing a single accusatory finger at him. She had to stab the undeserving cheese, otherwise she would have been pointing the knife in his direction, which may have resulted in much worse than what was about to come. “Efficient?!

“You think you’re efficient, Jaune Arc? Fifteen years you’ve been doing this, ten without my help, and you still think that this idea of forcing the Maidens to give up their power to the people in the pictures you show them is a good idea?! You’re not a hero, Jaune.”

“I know that, Ruby.”

Her next words hit him like a slap in the face, spat in rage that sang true.

“You’re a serial killer.”

Jaune started, feeling the lance of her words stopping any further lines from coming up his throat and escaping his lips. His heart skipped a beat, two, three, and she continued.

“The past ten years, I swear that you’ve done nothing but kill Maidens. You haven’t even tried to convince any others to come over to our side. You’re killing humanity worse than the Grimm, Jaune! How many have you killed since you last came home?”

“I…”

“How many?!”

He let out a sigh, resigning himself to the fate that he took on the second he embarked on his mission. “Four.”

“Which ones.” It was a demand, not a question.

“One summer, path lost. Three winter, passed through the family, then lost.”

“So that’s why you came back, Jaune.” She spat the words at him as an accusation. One that rang true, no less. “You need information. To see if any rumors had circulated through the mill about any other maidens you could hunt down and murder.”

“No!” he said, standing up and almost casting the table he sat at aside and into the wall. “I only seek them so I can add their power to ours!”

“Then why do you insist on killing them instead of making new allies?”

“Because they won’t be our allies.”

“Do you just ask them, or do you try to convince them? Oh, wait. You’ve killed their families, so you can’t really convince them. Now, can you?” Ruby tapped her chin and stared at him with those same silver eyes that the Grimm had come to fear. It was one of the reasons they didn’t attack New Vale anymore. The other was Tara. But the important part was that one of those reasons was staring him down at the present moment.

“I ask, and they refuse, then they attack. My previous deeds have nothing to do with their reaction.” He was lying and he knew it. Ruby’s wrath would only descend on him further at this point.

“I swear, if I hear one more lie from your tongue, Jaune Arc, I’m going to cut your tongue out of your-” she cut herself off as she heard a call from the shop out front.

“Mom?” It was a clear and true voice that Jaune recognized, and it made his heart sink even more. Tara.

“I’m in the kitchen, Tara,” Ruby responded with the same clear, clarion voice that he had heard her speak so many times before.

“You’re usually in the shop at this time,” Tara responded, stepping into the kitchen through the oilcloth curtain. “What stopped your…” she turned and looked at Jaune, a wide smile spreading across her face.

Tara was not of Jaune and Ruby’s blood. Though they were together at one point, the kind of contact needed to produce children just did not come naturally to the two of them. Jaune was still hung up over… well, a certain incident, and Ruby never paid any mind to that sort of contact.

Nevertheless, even if she didn’t take after Ruby in appearance, she took after her in bearing. While her hair was the same brown as ripe walnuts, plucked from the shell, and her eyes shone a brilliant blue, she still carried herself with that same positive, excited attitude that her adoptive mother had all those years ago. She would be almost seventeen, now, and stood almost a full foot taller than her mom.

“Dad!” she cried out and rushed forward to hug Jaune, her arms wrapping around him excitedly as she rested the side of her head against his collarbone. Jaune was hesitant to hug her back, even if he loved her dearly. He just didn’t think he deserved her love, what with him being absent for so much of her life, and having done the things he did. Hands stained with the blood of women not much older or not much younger than her didn’t deserve to touch her. Ruby spoke true. He was a serial killer of sorts, but every time aside from when he held Tara in his arms, the ends justified the means.

Despite his apprehension, his arms wrapped around her, even if his palms and fingers did not touch her clothes or skin. Tara didn’t seem to notice, and Jaune smiled, looking back on that day ten years ago.

_  
“It’s just… gone.” Ruby said, her face twisted in shock and awe as they came across the ruined timbers and cobblestones of a village on the northern tip of Vale, just south of Vytal. Sure enough, a Grimm attack had left the village in shambles, no survivors to be found._

_“We need to move on, then. If the Spring Maiden is dead, then we have no reason to be here,” Jaune said, focused on the mission._

_Ruby reached out and touched a hand to her confidante’s shoulder. They were so much closer than friends, bordering on married save for the vows. They loved each other, even if that love did not extend into the physical. “Let’s just do a quick search, Jaune?” Ruby said, her eyes pleading with him._

_Even this far down the line, she knew how to get him._

_“Alright,” he conceded, “A quick sweep, but that’s it. We’re not setting up camp or anything.”_

_“Thank you,” Ruby said, and she pulled him down even as she got up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. Even then, when she would act the way she used to in order to get what she wanted, things would seem the way they used to be. Jaune couldn’t refuse her when she got like that. They split off and started looking through the torn-down and destroyed buildings._

_They pulled aside rubble with ease, casting it away while they used their aura as a supplement to their strength. After a good while of searching, from across the city, Jaune heard a cry from Ruby go up. “Over here!”_

_He moved to her as quickly as he could, crossing through, over, and around the destroyed remnants of this town to reach Ruby. When he approached her again, she kneeled alongside a small half-dome of tangled roots, no more than a meter wide, set deep into a pit in the earth which may have been a cellar or basement before the house around it was destroyed. From within there were the quiet, hurried breaths of a young girl. She was scared._

_Jaune crouched next to the half-dome alongside Ruby, and called out, “Are you okay in there? We’re going to get you out, alright?” He started to draw his sword from its scabbard, only to have Ruby’s hand stop his draw with an iron grip on his wrist._

_She spoke soothingly, trying to coax the little girl out of her shell. “We’re friends. We saw that your village was destroyed and we came to help. Can you let us in, please?”_

_A pause in the breaths from within, and the roots parted enough to allow a skinny, dirty girl to escape from between them. She waited, half inside the roots and half outside, staring at Jaune and Ruby with fear, anticipation, and bordering on malevolence. Whatever happened her made her less human and more rabbit. Willing to flee and hide at the first sign of provocation. Ruby extended her hand and smiled. It was that same warm smile that had made her so many friends in the past, and the little girl was no exception._

_She leaped into Ruby’s arms, sobbing and clinging to her tightly as if the girl in the red cloak couldn’t possibly be real. Ruby cooed and stroked her dirty, matted hair, telling the youngling that everything was going to be fine. Eventually, the sobs subsided, and the girl fell asleep, comforted and at peace in Ruby’s arms._

_Once the girl was asleep, Jaune scowled at Ruby. “She can’t be.”_

_“I think she is, Jaune,” Ruby said as she looked down at the young girl, not even eight years old, with a sense of joy and motherly love. “She’s what we’ve been looking for.”_

_“If she’s the Spring Maiden,” Jaune said, hissing through clenched teeth as not to wake the girl, “She’s useless! We need someone that can fight for us now!”_

_“Give her time,” Ruby said, “We’ll have to look after her. You and me.” She looked up at Jaune, knowing she could trust him. “She needs us, and we need her. Just stay around long enough to raise her, Jaune. If we have one maiden, that’s better than nothing. And I think you need someone other than me to ground you.”  
_

Jaune acquiesced. He agreed to help Ruby raise their new daughter back in New Vale, to help her gain an understanding and control of her maiden powers.

He didn’t stick around.

He got sick, tired, fed up of waiting for victory that he went out to seek it on his own. He left a furious Ruby holding their sobbing daughter’s hand, their emotions unswayed by his promise that he would come back. And come back he did, but not for weeks or (more likely) months at a time.

Their daughter, Tara (short for Oestara), kept on growing bigger and bigger, and Jaune didn’t have to pretend when he said “oh, look at how big you’ve gotten” early on. He was really surprised. She still clung to him with all the excitement she could muster. Her mother had instilled in her a love for her father, just as Ruby had once held for him. That flame died away each time he left until it was only an ember smoldering in a dead fireplace.

Jaune didn’t regret that.

What he did regret was when Tara hugged him after a long absence that shifted into an increasingly long homecoming, and how he didn’t feel joy. He only felt regret that he hadn’t been as good a father as she thought he was. Hell, he wasn’t even as good a man as she thought he was.

He prayed the day wouldn’t come when she found out everything he had done.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, pulling back and cautiously resting his hands on her shoulder in such a light way that they may as well not have been there at all. “Heavens above, you’re almost as tall as your old man, now. What has Ma been feeding you?”

“Better than what you’ve been eating, old man!” Tara said before she hugged him again. It was a little game between the two of them. He’d keep calling her kiddo, because that’s what she was to him. She’d keep calling him old man, because that’s what he was to everyone. It was a good game. “You look like a strong wind could knock you over!”

“One almost did, kiddo,” he said, telling her a bit of the truth of his last encounter. “One almost did…”

“What happened while you were away, Dad?” she asked, looking up at him with admiring eyes. Clearly, Ruby had still told her stories of how he was in years gone by.

“Oh, my stories aren’t that interesting,” He said, trying to brush it off, “Mostly a lot of walking and a lot of bad meals. What’s been going on with you, kiddo? I bet the boys are fawning all over you, despite their fear of your old Ma.”

“Ugh,” she said, sticking out her tongue in disgust, “Yeah, Mom says I’ve been getting more and more ‘suitors’, but none of them suit me at all.” She started leading Jaune out to the backyard, presumably to sit back and talk. “That pimply-faced Jaca Sculi asked me to go fishing with him the other day. But we all know what that means…”

Tara kept talking and Jaune spared a glance back at Ruby, remorse in his eyes. Remorse that he didn’t live up to the stories that Ruby told Tara, remorse that he was a horrible partner, a horrible father, a horrible man.

Ruby just nodded and gestured for him to go with their daughter, her silver eyes shining with a smile as she watched the two getting along.

As far as Ruby was concerned, there was still hope for him yet.


	3. Chapter 3

Jaune and Tara stepped outside, moving over to the rocking chairs that Ruby obtained in exchange for a few new plates and pots from one of the other craftsmen in New Vale. They were made of sturdy pine, lacquered and fire-hardened so they wouldn’t be coming apart anytime soon, and they made the most pleasant creak as the father and daughter pair settled into them.

“So tell me about your adventures, dad! What have you been doing all this time?” Tara asked, leaning forward and putting her chin in her hands. Jaune took out a short-stemmed pipe from a pouch in his pocket, and packed it full of the dried, shredded leaves that people cured in the village proper. Even when he’d been gone for months on end, Ruby kept a small box of matches on the table on the back porch for him. Jaune lit the pipe and puffed on it for a moment before he responded.

“I’ve been wandering all over the continent, kiddo,” he said, trying to avoid the true topic at hand. “Looking for people like you and trying to convince them to join us to fight back against the Grimm.” That much was true. Yet his methods of convincing never really worked, did they?

“That sounds so cool!” Tara said, sitting up straight. “Have you met any interesting people? Can I meet them?”

Jaune’s memory flashed back to the girl in the canyon that pulled herself further on his sword, then to her sister with head separated from shoulders, then to their mother, who died of sickness in his arms. The girls thought he killed her. He may as well have. “Some interesting people, yes,” he conceded, “But we had to go our separate ways.” Specifically, they had to go to a place where he could not follow. Not yet, at least.

“When are you going to take me on an adventure, Dad?” Tara asked, a slight pout on her face. She picked that up from Ruby early on, and Jaune would go so far as to say his daughter had mastered the art better than her mother. It left a little pang inside him, one that he hid with a rueful chuckle.

“You’re fifteen years too young for this, kiddo,” he said, then stared wistfully out across the backyard. Ruby’s shop and home were closer to the center of town. The village itself was laid out in a reasonable manner, with long, wide streets and shops built into the homes of their owners and operators. It was a town designed for efficiency, a bulwark of sturdy defense. Jaune admired it, but he couldn’t stay here… not while he had work that he needed to do.

“I’ve been training with Penny,” Tara said, folding her arms in indignation, “She and Mom say that I keep on getting better by the day. I’m ready to go out on one of your adventures with you, Dad.” She looked up at him with hope in her eyes, hope that Jaune would dash in a heartbeat.

“You’re not coming with me, Tara,” he said, his voice unyielding, “And that’s final.” There was no need for his daughter to find out that he was a murderer of women that were, more often than not, closer in age to her than to him. He didn’t have the heart to tell her not only what he did, but also that he would have to protect her from enemies that she may not be able to fight on her own. He couldn’t keep that on his conscience if he not only lost his daughter, but one of the Maidens as well.

Tara frowned and looked out across their yard, more hurt than upset. The sweet air carried wisps of smoke into nothingness, and Jaune found the silence uncomfortable. He gestured out into the yard, where the wind rustled the stalks of corn and beans that grew out in the garden. It was necessary that every home in the village had a small garden in their backyard, each growing different crops than the next one over. This way, the villagers of New Vale could have food all year round, and none of the land was going to waste. Much like the people, the crops had grown hardy and tough, to the point that not even a hard freeze could kill them off.

“Your strawberry bushes are looking good this year,” Jaune commented, taking another draw off his pipe and exhaling through his nose.

“I guess,” Tara said. Jaune knew that the dismissive answer was payback for his comment that she was in no shape to come with him the next time he left. Jaune bit down on the stem of the pipe even harder, knowing full well that he might snap right through it.

“Tara,” he said, gentle in voice, “I know that it seems unfair, but you have only fought against Grimm that are fool enough to charge the walls of the town. You have allies and a fortified position, and you usually outnumber your opponents,” he explained. “You’ve been on the winning side of every conflict you’ve ever been on. You don’t know what it’s like out there, and it’s so very different.”

“Then show me, Dad,” she said, looking over at him, bordering on pleading, “Mom says that you’ve been looking for… for people like me.” Ruby never told her the truth about the Maidens, it seemed, that they were the four women destined to save the world when their powers were combined.

“I have, but some of them…” well, here he went, “Some of them aren’t friendly. Some of them try to kill me, and I have to fight back against them. It usually ends badly for them, and that means that their power passes on to someone else.”

Tara stopped for a second, and the implications sank in. Her eyes went wide and she stammered for a moment, “Dad... you’ve been killing these Maidens? You’ve been killing the people that you’ve been looking for?”

Jaune hung his head and chewed on his pipe stem before he nodded solemnly. “Yeah."

There was another pause between them, and when Tara spoke again, her voice was filled with fire. “How old are they?”

“Old enough,” he said, guarding himself from his daughter’s ire. He felt tense now, like there was no way he’d make it out of this safely. He’d lose his daughter, just as he lost all the other Maidens.

“How old are they, Dad?” She asked, her voice harder, more like her mothers.

“Old enough to fight and die.”

“That can be as young as ten!”

“And that’s how young I’ve had to kill them!” He snapped back, his teeth gritting on the stem of his pipe, threatening to split it in half.

His response stunned Tara, and she felt her throat tighten up. “You’ve killed children…” she said, voice choked up despite the love that she felt for Jaune.

“More than I’d care to count,” he responded quietly. It was one thing for Ruby to know the truth, but it was something else for Tara to hear it.

“Why?” She asked, bordering on tears. 

“Because they attacked first.”

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

“That doesn’t’ mean you have to kill them, Dad!”

Jaune’s gaze shifted over to Tara with a furious intensity. “Have you ever fought against another Maiden?” He said, the anger apparent in his voice. “It would be easy for you, you know. You’re more powerful than I ever was. But for someone like me, it’s a hard fight, no matter what. Do you have any idea how hard it is to stay alive out there, let alone win?”

Tara was silent as Jaune stared right through her, his gaze hard as the iron that her mother hammered on in the forge.

“I am strong, Tara. One of the few that can stand up to someone as powerful as you. Your mother was another, but she would have died by now. I know this,” he said somberly, “I’ve killed far more than I would like. I should go to hell a thousand times over for what I’ve done, Tara.”

She finally spoke up, noting the pain in his eyes, “Why do you have to do it this way?”

“Because I can’t think of another one,” he said sadly, “They don’t want to join us, and we can’t afford to let the power fall into the wrong hands.”

“Whose hands are the wrong ones, dad?” 

Jaune leaned back in the rocking chair and puffed on his pipe, trying to accumulate the words properly. “Long ago, decades before you were born, there was an evil woman named Cinder, and a more evil woman named Salem. Cinder was one of the maidens, and she took her power from one of the good guys, and Salem… well, in the simplest terms, she is queen of the Grimm. Cinder and Salem went around trying to find all the other maidens, and give their power to women under their control so they could rule the world as they saw fit.”

Tara watched her dad with intent, lingering on his every word, and asked, “Why didn’t you and Mom stop them?”

“We tried, Tara. Believe me, we tried. We lost people. Friends, teachers, parents. I had to see my… teammate,” he lingered on that word while thinking about Pyrrha, “have a memorial ceremony held for her because there was nothing left but ash when Cinder was finished. Eventually, we had to go out and hunt down the Maidens, make sure the power didn’t stay in Salem’s hands. Your mother, myself, and a few others ganged up on them and killed them without a second thought, simply because they were on Salem’s side. Cinder got away, and I’m pretty sure she’s still alive out there, but the Spring, Summer, and Winter maidens… their power changed hands so many times, and so many of them refused to fight with us.”

“What happened when they refused? Did you have to fight them too?”

“No,” Jaune said, “Not at first. We simply let them go on their own way, but Salem always hunted them down and found them. Whether they fought with her, or against her, the power wound up back in her hands.”

“So why did you have to hunt the maidens on your own? What happened to the rest of your team?”

“Nora and Ren went off and founded a village much like this one in the northern part of Vacuo. I still visit them when I’m in that part of the world. Neptune, Sun, and Blake are presumably still on walkabout, or dead. I haven’t heard from them in thirty years. Your mother stayed behind to raise you, her sister is up in the north, presumably still fighting Arctic Grimm in an attempt to grow stronger. Weiss… she’s in Atlas. She rules over the city as her family did before her. I’m pretty sure that she’s forgotten about the rest of us. Sage and Scarlet went missing in the southern part of Mistral just before we found you. Nobody’s heard from them since.”

“Have you had any success since then? With the maidens?”

“No. You’re the last time we got lucky.”

“Maybe your method doesn’t work anymore.”

Jaune nodded, knowing that her words held truth, “Maybe it doesn’t. But I can’t think of a better one.”

A call came from the inside of the house, “Jaune! Tara! It’s time for lunch!” Ruby presumably finished making them some sandwiches to enjoy before they went about their business again.

“Coming!” They both said as Jaune tapped out his pipe into the ash pot next to the chair, and left it on the table to air out.

Tara went in before him, and he stretched, his back creaking in his old age. Even if he was still fit as a fiddle, he felt old. But talking with Tara, telling what he had done… it shaved off a few years, it seemed. He smiled and went back inside, joining Ruby and Tara at the table.

The fare was simple. Bread, milk, cheese, and fruit, all flavorful and hearty, so much better than the rations he had taken to eating on the road. They ate in relative silence, enjoying the meal as a family. It was nice… until Tara said something in a tone as calm as a pond.

“Dad told me what you guys did in the past.”

Jaune was slicing a piece of cheese from the wheel, and his surprise at the statement caused his hand to slip, pricking his finger. He muttered an obscenity and channeled some of his aura into the cut, causing it to seal up quickly, leaving only a small splotch of blood on his skin where it once was. He sucked it off and looked over at Ruby.

Ruby just sat, still as could be, and folded her hands in front of her. “Do you think less of him for it?” she asked.

“No, not really. He told me why all of you started doing what you did in the first place, and I understand, but I don’t think that’s necessary anymore.”

“While your father’s methods don’t sit well with me either,” she said, and Jaune noticed that she may as well have spoken with clenched teeth for all the kindness she was trying to put into those words, “We have to keep power out of the hands of those that would misuse it.”

“I understand that, Mom!” Tara said, “But he needs help! I want to go with him.”

Jaune slammed his hand on the table, jostling the plates and cups for a moment as he said, “Tara! I already told you that is out of the question.”

Ruby turned her head slowly and stared Jaune in the eye, and he felt those flames of silver licking at his skin, his sins crawling up his back to whisper in his ears all of his faults. “Is it, Jaune?”

“It certainly is,” Jaune snapped in return, “It’s too dangerous, and even I have a hard time fighting against the Maidens when they turn against me. I’m not going to take Tara out into a world where I don’t know if I can return her unharmed.”

“Tara, how has your training with Penny been going?” Ruby asked, not taking her eyes of Jaune.

“She says I’m getting better by the day. I think I’m ready,” Tara said a little meekly. It was always scary when her parents argued.

“Good. Then the next time your father leaves, you and Penny going with him.”

“What?!” The exclamation came from both Jaune and Tara at the same time, with both of them staring at Ruby in shock.

“That’s final,” she said, taking a sip of milk and nibbling on a bit of cheese. “How long are you in town, Jaune?”

“How long will it take you to give Crocea Mors a tune up?”

Ruby turned to Tara and said, “Then it’s settled. You have two days to get everything together, including supplies, farewells, and advice from your father. No doubt he’ll be quiet as a mouse for the majority of the trip. Better chat him up now.”

She turned back to Jaune, “And you. If you return to New Vale without our daughter or a letter from her saying that she’s safe where she is, I’ll kill you myself.”

Both Jaune and Tara gulped at that notion. Jaune knew this was his last chance, Tara knew it was her first. They both wanted to do it right.

“That settled?” Ruby asked, glancing at both of the fearful faces. “Good. Now,” she said, straightening up and taking a bite of cheese, “For the next two days, let’s just spend some time together as a normal family. I’d at least like to have a few peaceful meals with all three of us here before you two go off on your great adventure.”

Jaune didn’t like the way she talked about it like it was some picnic, like it was something harmless and fun, a way for father and daughter to bond. It was dangerous, and he didn’t want to risk Tara’s life just because Ruby said so. After they finished eating, Tara went to go and practice with Penny, and Jaune helped wash the dishes with Ruby.

“Why do you insist on having her go with me, Ruby?” Jaune said.

Ruby stayed quiet for a moment, then turned to face him. “Do you really think you could take a young woman’s life in front of your daughter, Jaune?”

That made him bite his tongue if only for a moment, “That aside, you’re sending her out into danger. She’s young, inexperienced, and she’s a Maiden, for goodness’ sakes!”

“Which means that she should be about as tough as you, if not tougher,” Ruby responded, handing him one of the metal plates to dry off and put away. “She’s had both Penny and I training her for the past five years, and she’s gotten really handy with her powers. I think she can handle it,” she explained.

“I’d feel a lot better if she at least had a real weapon,” He muttered, “I doubt you’re going to let her take Penny with us.”

“I already planned on it,” Ruby explained with a sly smile, “I’ve been planning for her to go out on the search with you for a long time, Jaune. Today just cinched it.”

Jaune sat with his mouth hanging open for a while before he turned to her and gave her a tight, warm hug. “I promise I’ll bring her home safe,” he told her.

“Well, you come home safe too. I know you can handle yourself, but don’t do anything dumber than what you already have.”

Jaune kissed the crown of her head and went out back to spend some time with his daughter. “Alright, kiddo!” he said, cracking his knuckles as he approached. “Let’s see what you can do. Penny? Think you can handle me?”

“Ab-so-lutely!” the chipper voice responded, “I am combat ready!”


	4. Chapter 4

Tara held the familiar shape of Crescent Rose in her hands, though time had changed it to the point where there were a few new additions. For starters, the magazine had been enlarged to the point where it could hold more dust rounds, and extended along the length of the scythe’s shaft to make it appear more streamlined. Additionally, Ruby had modified the weapon so it could fire Aura rounds as well as standard or Dust ammunition. Finally, the head had been extended a little ways in the opposite direction of the blade to the point where it almost had a counterbalance for the massive blade. That’s what housed Penny.

After that fateful Vytal Festival so long ago, Penny had been torn to shred, ripped to pieces by the wires of her own making, but even as her vital systems lay scattered about on the tournament stage, she had managed to power herself down and preserve her core, her “brain”, “heart”, what have you. Rather than risk another fiasco by making new body for Penny, her creator, Geppetto, reviewed her footage and neural links, the connections she had made with other people over the course of time.

Ruby was the one she was closest to.

In the early days of the war, Geppetto approached Ruby and asked her to hand over Crescent Rose, that way he could give the weapon an upgrade. In addition to integrating Penny’s soul with the weapon, he had added in a speaker (which could switch over to an earbud for convenience during battle) as well as a holographic projector so she could appear in form as well as communicate with the outside world. Other tinkerings, such as three hundred and sixty degree motion detection, infrared and ultraviolet scope, and recoil stabilizers, not only made it so Penny could operate the weapon even while it was in another’s hands, but also improve the effectiveness of the weapon-huntsperson pair overall.

Ruby was an artist with Crescent Rose before. But with Copper Rose in her hands, and accompanying backup from Penny, she became a virtuoso of battle.

If Tara had even a fifth of her mother’s talent, she would be a force to be reckoned with. Jaune left Crocea Mors on the table so Ruby could get to it whenever she was ready, and went out with his daughter, into the backyard to spar. A glance about the yard turned garden prompted a disappointing revelation. “Oh no, no. this is not nearly enough space,” he informed Tara with a shake of his head. “Come on, kiddo. We have to go outside the walls.”

Tara cocked her head, a cascade of auburn hair shifting to cover her face slightly before she blew it out of her eyes, “You’re kidding, right, Dad?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jaune said as he lifted the clasp on the back gate. There was a sort of alleyway between the rows of houses that could go out to the main streets and outer limits of New Vale. “Besides, if we come across any Grimm, I’ll get to see how you handle yourself.”

Penny’s voice chirped out from Copper Rose, providing information, “If previous aura level readings on Jaune are still accurate, the entire town is in danger if we spar from within its walls.”

Jaune frowned at the spoken consideration that he was a person of mass destruction and spoke flatly, “Thank you, Penny.” Fifty years inside a weapon had not changed her candor much, it seemed.

“Certainly!” Penny responded before going silent. Despite her interactions with Ruby, she couldn’t pick up on when someone though her feedback or behavior was less than helpful. Nevertheless, her input had confirmed what he had previously thought.

“You heard the lady, kiddo,” Jaune said to Tara as he went out into the alleyway and towards the town gates. “Let’s get a move on. I passed by a clearing not too far from here that should be enough space for us.”

Tara went along without further protest. Two souls older and (arguably, in Penny’s case) wiser than she said fighting outside the town’s limits was a good idea. It would be far from her to fly in the face of safety. She put Copper Rose across the small of her back, just as her mother used to, and followed her dad.

The gate guards let them go with little trouble, only telling them to stay safe and be back by dark, etc. It was the usual spiel that they gave to all residents that would go out into the woods for hunting or foraging, and Jaune had heard it a thousand and one times over the years, with variations depending on where he was in the world. It did not change much, since everyone that was still alive by this point knew better than to be out after dark when there were still Grimm about. Which was always.

Jaune and Tara made their ways out into the forest, diverted off the winding road through the woods, and soon arrived on a clearing. “Is this good enough for you, Penny?” Jaune asked, glancing over his shoulder back at Tara. More pointedly, he glanced at her weapon. A moment of silence passed before Penny responded, “The clearing may not be sufficient, but we are far enough away from New Vale as not to damage it. Warning: prolonged conflict may attract Grimm.”

“That’s fine,” Jaune said as he went over to a rock, shedding his long coat and draping it across a rock. Underneath, he had a long-sleeved white shirt and a set of bracers. He rolled his sleeves up his elbows, as if he were about to chop some wood or hoe a row in the garden. “Right. Let’s see what you’ve got, kiddo,” Jaune said, turning to face his daughter.

Tara tilted her head in confusion before she asked, “Dad…. You’re not armed.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

Penny chimed in to answer Tara’s question for her. “A scan of Jaune’s abilities, compared with previous information indicates that his skill level, experience, and aura are more than enough to combat you while armed. Even factoring in the unpredictable nature of your Maiden abilities at their height, Jaune will be more than a match for you.” Penny paused before she continued, “Truthfully, I think that it would be wiser for him to hold back significantly to ensure a fair fight.”

“Thank you, Penny,” Jaune said, and there was no note of contempt in his voice. “I’ll dial it back a bit, kiddo, and you don’t use your maiden powers. We’re sparring, not trying to kill each other,” he explained. Straightening up, he gestured for Tara to stand at the ready, “Bring it on, kiddo. Show your old man what you can do.”

Tara hesitantly reached behind her back and took hold of Copper Rose’s handle, bringing it out from its holster across the small of her back. The weapon sprung to life in her hands, spanning out to its full length in an instant. The weapon dwarfed Ruby when she had carried it, but it seemed to fit Tara’s form a little better, even if it was still massive in size. As opposed to her mother, who launched herself hither and yon with the recoil from the sniper rifle aspect, Tara was a little more cautious, less gung ho when it came to combat.

She and Jaune started to circle each other in the clearing, and she murmured commands to Penny to gain every advantage she could. “Engage Global Positioning Module and get me a topographical scan of the area, please.”

“Certainly,” Penny responded, and less than a moment later, she spoke up with, “Scan complete. Collision warning system engaged.”

Tara flipped Copper Rose in front of her, the barrel pointed right at Jaune, the blade pointed to her right instead of driven into the ground, and pulled the trigger. The thundering crack of the rifle shot resounded, and Jaune swayed slightly to the left as the aura bullet sailed past him. Tara, however, only intended that as a way to gain momentum. The recoil of the shot caused her to spin in a counterclockwise direction, her feet moving in time to move towards him. More shots rang out, increasing her speed until she got close to Jaune. By this point, she had turned into a flurry of long scythe blade that Jaune couldn’t see an easy way to intercept.

After a moment, Tara pulled the haft of Copper Rose closer to her and began spinning it in tighter, faster, much more controlled circles. The blade whistled through the air, and as she pressed her father back towards the treeline, she changed her grip once again.

The centripetal force allowed her to change her grip to the point where she only had one hand gripping the shaft at its pommel, and continued spinning in wider, slightly lazier circles. Jaune almost let out a low whistle of admiration at her actions. In a fraction of a second, she had changed her grip from circles that were barely three feet in radius to more than three times that. Granted, a lot of control was lost through the transition, but it kept people at a much wider distance. Tara’s shots kept firing out, causing her to spin more and more rapidly, to the point where Jaune couldn’t see an obvious point to slip in for a strike.

She was good.

After a moment, Jaune cracked his neck, figuring it would take some recklessness to turn this into a fight rather than a standoff, and dove in. He shielded his arms with his aura, readying a block that would catch the shaft rather than the blade, and planted his feet firmly. Copper Rose clanged against the bracers of aura he had summoned, and Tara stared at him for a moment before she grunted and pulled on the shaft to assume a normal grip on the weapon. Now the fight began in earnest.

Jaune put his guard up in an old boxing stance, ready to duck, weave, and counterattack any strikes that Tara sent his way. When fighting against a longer weapon, the counterattack was important, since it was the opportunity for him to move within the strike radius. Tara’s first swing came.

Tara saw the stance and swung for Jaune’s shins, hoping to strike against his calf, or trip him with a clever hook of Copper Rose. “He appears to be favoring his left ankle,” Penny chimed to Tara, and that was her target. She went for her dad’s left ankle, only to have the scythe blade sail harmlessly through as he lifted his leg up to deliver a quick front kick. Tara saw it coming quickly enough and brought the haft of Copper Rose to block it.

Jaune, however, saw that coming. It was less of a kick for him, and more of a shove. He planted his foot against the haft of Copper Rose and shoved, pushing Tara back a few steps. Jaune moved in, his aura wreathing his limbs as to provide a shield against any of Copper Rose’s edges, and started throwing punches to her face and body.

With her dad so close, well within the range of Copper Rose, Tara was on the defensive, blocking and dodging his strikes with increasing difficulty. Just when she thought she was finding her rhythm, terrain threw it off.

“Left foot, tree trunk,” Penny informed her through the earbud, a message that cut her plans of establishing solid footing and launching a counterattack short. Instead, Tara had to improvise. Her foot lifted her up onto the trunk of the felled tree, and started to launch her away, out of Jaune’s reach. Now that he was a fair distance away from her, she planted the scythe blade into the ground, sending him a volley of shots from Copper Rose shots that would impact with the force of a thrown sledgehammer.

Jaune instead put his arms in front of his face, guarding his head and chest as he charged forth through the strikes, his own aura dissipating the shots and casting their force off to the sides with ease. The shots slowed him down as he moved forward towards her, impact forcing his feet deeper into the soft earth and grass beneath him. Nevertheless, he moved forward.

Seeing her father get closer and closer, Tara gritted her teeth and removed the blade of Copper Rose from the earth, starting to fire away and spin her weapon once again. He kept a tight grip on it, keeping it close and spinning it like a conductor’s baton, the blade whistling through the air. She even started timing her shots so they would sail towards Jaune. A few hit his guard, though most sailed past him and started to ping off the treeline, shredding through bark and wood. She mentally winced and made a note to patch that up after their fight.

She kept on moving backwards, searching for an opportunity to stop Jaune’s relentless advance. Tara saw her opportunity by watching his steps. He kept on marching forward without slowing down, one foot in front of the other… but his arms shone with a sheen that looked like glass the color of cream. That must be the guard he put up with his aura to assist his advance. Tara also noticed that his legs did not share that same shine. An adjustment of her timing caused her to fire off Copper Rose a split second sooner on the frontswing and later on the backswing. This aimed her shots squarely below the belt. All was fair in a fight, right? Besides, he was using a boxing stance and had thrown a kick at her earlier on.

Jaune kept his guard up as he advanced, and did not adjust it as he sensed the beginning in the change of timing. Instead, he only put a cover of aura over his groin in order to protect a debilitating injury. Not that protecting one’s boys was paramount, but there could potentially be irreparable damage to his parts if he took a hammerblow to them. He couldn’t have been more proud when, after only a moment of firing with the altered trajectory, one of those blows struck his right thigh. Jaune stumbled and the shots stopped, only for him to find the tip of Copper Rose just under the tip of his chin.

“Well done,” he told his daughter with a smile. He rose and offered his arms in wide embrace. They were both sweaty from the fight, but he didn’t care.

Tara embraced him, “You weren’t even trying, Dad,” she said, a little disappointed. They held the hug for a while, and Jaune’s ears pricked up after a moment.

“Well, kiddo,” he said, releasing her and looking out to the edges of the clearing, “You want to see what your old man is capable of when he tries?”

“Why…?” Tara trailed off and glanced at the edge of the clearing to see a few Grimm leaving the trees. A few turned into a few dozen until Jaune and Tara were surrounded. “Dad?” she asked worriedly, “There’s a whole lot of them.” To be honest, this was probably the most Grimm that she had ever seen in her life, more than when the Grimm orchestrated an attack on the Village. She looked up at her dad in fear.

“Stay close, Tara,” Jaune said calmly, and the air started to grow heavier around her. His face was set in a grim stare, and he stared out at the collection of Boarbatusk, Beowolf, and Ursa with eyes that looked like they were set with chips of sapphire. The air kept getting heavier until she thought she wasn’t going to be able to breathe.

Off in the distance, a tree groaned and one of its branches snapped, then another. Some of them crushed the Grimm, and Tara looked at her father in shock. Was he doing that? Without even moving? All around them, Grimm started to drop down to their knees, all fours pressed against the ground as they roared in pain and defiance, not even able to stand anymore.

This continued for a moment until all the Grimm lay on the ground, and their bones began to snap under the weight of their own bodies. His gaze turned hard and ruthless as he stared at the collection of Grimm, and, one by one, they let out their death cries, fading into spores of black mist. When the last one faded into nothingness, Jaune turned back to his daughter, the air turning light and breathable again. He gave her a smile in contrast to what he had just done and let out a long sigh. “Wow. Okay, that got a little hairy. Come on, kiddo. Let’s go home. We need to be back by dark.”

Jaune went over to the stone where he left his jacket, rolled down his sleeves, and donned the long coat once again. Tara went about bit by bit and used her Maiden power to reattach the snapped-off limbs and heal the pockmarks in the bodies of the trees from Copper Rose’s shots. She whispered to Penny when she thought her dad couldn’t hear, “Penny, have you ever seen anything like that?”

Penny’s response was the audible equivalent of her nodding, “Ruby and I travelled with that for forty years.”

“Did you ever get used to seeing him do that?”

“No, Tara. I never did.”


	5. Chapter 5

“He just… crushed them all!” Tara explained, gesturing wildly to demonstrate her persistent lack of disbelief with regards to the juggernaut-amount of power that her father demonstrated earlier. “He didn’t even move. He just… destroyed them all with the force of his will.”

“I know,” Ruby said with a snicker, shaking her head as she looked up at the ceiling, thinking back to old times. “It’s kind of hard to believe that he used to be that awkward little Vomit Boy that I met all those years ago.”

“Vomit Boy?”

“Something my sister Yang named him after she saw him throwing up on the airship to Beacon. It was our first time in the air like that, and the first time that we more or less met.”

Tara let out a scoffing laugh and sipped at the nettle tea that sat in front of her. “I guess Dad knew how to make a first impression.” The statement dripped with sarcasm.

“First? No. Later impressions, though… He was lucky that I kept on giving him chances. Otherwise his only friends would have been his team. I still can’t believe that he’s the man he’s become.” Ruby said this with a note of bittersweetness. Bitter because of the things he had done, and sweet because she was proud that he grew into the power that he had all along.

“What was Dad like when he was younger?” Tara asked, hoping that she could catch her mother during this moment of misty-eyed nostalgia. Not that she hadn’t heard stories about him so far back in the day, but she loved hearing her mother’s tales about how he was so long ago.

“He was a huge dork,” Ruby said, reiterating the main point that came across in all those stories, “But after a few months of being at Beacon, he became one of the most courageous and kind people I ever knew. He wasn’t the kind of man to go back on a promise, as we found out at a dance one time,” she said with a snicker at the memory.

“Wait… what?” Tara asked, intrigued and confused. “What did Dad do? What promise did he make?”

Ruby listened for a moment. Jaune was upstairs taking a bath in the massive tub they had above the forge, and they often used the heat from the embers to boil water off one of the smokestacks leading out of the roof. She still heard his loud, cheerful whistling and the quiet splashing of water, and knew that she was safe from being bothered for a little while.

Ruby leaned in to speak to Tara and spoke in a hushed whisper. “We were at a formal dance, with men in nice suits and girls in dresses, the whole kit and caboodle.”

“You wore a dress?” Tara asked in disbelief.

“Hush, Tara. That’s not important. What mattered was that your father made a promise to someone. He told her that if she couldn’t get a date for the dance, he would show up in a dress.”

Tara’s jaw hung open in an increasingly wide stare of disbelief. “Was… was it a bet in his favor?”

“So he thought,” Ruby said, sipping at her tea.

“What do you mean?”

“The person he made the bet with was Pyrrha Nikos.”

That made sense. Ruby had mentioned Pyrrha in a number of her stories, particularly epic recountings of a food fight when they were young. But when Tara started asking questions about where Pyrrha is now, her mother clammed right up. Ruby always described Pyrrha as a beautiful, statuesque woman, like out of a fairy tale, capable of rending apart an army of Grimm entirely by herself, almost as skilled as a fully-fledged huntsman at the age of seventeen. She sounded wonderful, the kind of woman that would have no problem getting a date for a dance of any kind.

“And Dad lost?!” Tara said in disbelief.

“Not as hard a thing for him to lose as you would think, Tara,” Ruby explained, “Everyone else saw the way Pyrrha looked at Jaune except for Jaune.”

“You mean that Pyrrha Nikos was in love with Dad?” Tara said with a hint of skepticism, considering how many tales Ruby told Tara of her father’s dorkiness in his younger years.

“I don’t think that anyone since has loved another the way Pyrrha loved your father,” Ruby said regretfully. She knew that her relationship with Jaune, while they did love each other, had always had a sense of her picking up the pieces after Pyrrha had died.

“Not even you and dad?” Tara asked, her eyes fixed on her mother.

Ruby simply shook her head. “Pyrrha showed up without a date because she was waiting for your father to ask her, and he was too oblivious. He found out, and the next thing you know, I see him on the dance floor in a halter top and a poodle skirt, asking her to dance.”

Tara’s face went from an expression of shock to a smile, picturing her grizzled, grumpy old man in a dress. Eventually that smile turned into a laugh that resounded throughout the entire house. It was so loud that Tara didn’t hear Jaune coming up behind her.

“Telling our daughter more stories of our misspent youth, Ruby?” he asked her as he leaned on the back of the chair next to Tara. He’d cut his hair so it was the same length as when he was younger (one does not mess with perfection), and shaved the mountain man beard away so it was nothing but a thick mustache on his upper lip, curling slightly at the tips as they extended down past the corners of his mouth.

“Mainly yours, Jaune,” Ruby said with that same soft smile she always gave him after talking about their days as children.

“Oh dear. Don’t think less of me, kiddo,” Jaune said as he tousled her hair and went over to the stove. The water was still hot, and he made himself a cup of tea before joining his family. “Which one did you tell her this time?”

“The story of you in a dress,” she said, knowing that his eyes would turn sad the second he thought about that memory.

“Ah,” he responded, and his eyes misted over to the point where Ruby thought tears would come shortly after. “That was a good night. Tara, just remember: Though you’re not my blood, you are an Arc nonetheless, and an Arc always keeps their promises.”  
Tara nodded slowly, letting the words sink in. The conviction with which he said it was enough to stun her and attract her attention, keeping it to the point that she knew there was a lot more behind it than just a family name. It was real to him.

As they sat in the hard silence that came afterwards, a call came at the entrance to the smithy, beyond the door to the dining room. “Ruby?” It was the voice of one of the guardsmen that Jaune had seen standing watch by the main gate. “Ruby, one of the crows came in for you.”

Ruby rose from the table and opened the door, gesturing for the guardsman to come into the dining room. The guardsman was a scrawny-looking man with dark skin that clutched to the boar spear nervously, knowing that he wasn’t just arriving at a late hour, but also that he was stepping into a home that housed no less than three legends. On his shoulder perched a raven with a small scroll of paper tied around one its legs.

Since the fall of the major cities, the Cross Continent Transmit System was less than worthless. It was a symbol of the societies that had been, and how they fell so quickly, one right after the other. Since then, the villages trained crows to travel between them with brief messages of dire importance. Ground messengers were risky, since they were likely to be stopped by Grimm, bandits, or any other form of nastiness that would be found on the roads or between them. Crows, at least, were smart enough to make the trip without dying, and fast enough to escape most of the airborne Grimm. Ruby approached the guardsman, who tilted his head away from Ruby so she could get at the crow. The crow extended its leg to her, the bit of paper tied tight with a strand of pink thread.

“It’s from Nora,” Ruby informed Jaune. Only she would dare to use a color that audacious and hard to come by for a simple correspondence. Of course, if it warranted a crow messenger, then it was probably far from simple. Jaune’s head lifted up in interest and he moved to peer over Ruby’s shoulder.

Ruby untied the message and unrolled it, examining the curl of parchment. A short statement awaited therein, written in a short, curling script.

 

_“Summer is here.”_

 

Ruby looked up at Jaune with wide eyes, knowing full well the implications of the message. Jaune understood too. “They’ve found the Summer Maiden,” Ruby said with a hushed breath. The path that Jaune had lost in the past few months with regard to the Summer Maiden had resurfaced, and it was either in very good hands, or very bad.

“There’s no indication as to whether or not the village is safe. We don’t know if Summer is a friend or an enemy,” Jaune said grimly. Ruby nodded and rushed off to write a response. Her quill jotted down a similarly short message, promising experts if the situation was good or backup if it was bad.

 

_“Spring and Arc en route”_

 

Ruby came back with the message and handed it back to the scrawny guardsman. He nodded and left as Ruby said, “Send that bird back first thing in the morning. Make sure it rests. I don’t want our message getting lost because the bird decided to die on us along the way.”

Once the guardsman was gone, Ruby let out a long sigh, taking off her long-sleeved black shirt to reveal the white tank top underneath, and grabbed her smith’s apron from its peg and tied it around her back. “You both leave first thing in the morning.”

Jaune nodded and said, “Go get some rest, kiddo. I’ll set us up with some provisions.”

Tara glanced around at her dad and her mom as they went their separate ways, each setting about their task. “Mom? What are you doing?”

“I’m fixing your dad’s sword. I’ll have to work all night if I want it shipshape by tomorrow morning,” Ruby responded as she went out to the forge, already poking the embers of spent coals back into a mighty blaze. Jaune started rummaging around in his pack, taking stock. He looked over at Tara expectantly and gestured for her to go upstairs.

“Go on, Tara. If you try to help your mother or I, you’re just going to get in the way. You’ll have plenty of time to help the professionals later.”

Tara let out a sigh of concession and went upstairs, falling asleep to the sound of her mother’s hammer on anvil.


End file.
